The forgetting curve
In 1885 Hermann Ebbinghaus measured how much of a list of syllables he remembered after hours and days, and drew the first forgetting curve: a steep drop at first that then flattens out. More than a century of experiments has confirmed it with real material: what you learn today and never use again is mostly gone within a week.
That is exactly what happens with GeoGuessr metas. You read a bollard guide, understand all of it, and next game you can't tell whether the white bollard with a red band was Australia or Turkey. It's not a lack of attention: it's how memory works. It discards what it doesn't need again.
The coral curve is a video or a guide read once. The lime one is what happens when you review right before forgetting: every review resets the drop and, crucially, the next drop is slower. By the fourth or fifth review the clue survives months without being seen.
Spaced repetition
Spaced repetition is the study technique with the most evidence behind it: instead of reviewing everything every day, you review each thing right when you are about to forget it. It is the principle behind flashcards, Leitner boxes and programs like Anki or SuperMemo.
The advantage is twofold. First, efficiency: you waste no time on what you already know. Second, retention: a review done at the point of maximum difficulty (when it has almost slipped) fixes the memory far better than one done while it's still fresh. That's why MetaSpotter never shows you a card "just in case".
In practice: every card has a next-review date. Each day you see the ones that are due plus a handful of new ones (20 by default, adjustable). A typical session is ten minutes.
FSRS, the scheduler
The hard part is deciding when you are about to forget each clue. MetaSpotter uses FSRS (Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler), an open-source algorithm trained on hundreds of millions of real reviews and now the default scheduler in Anki. It is considerably more accurate than the classic 1980s SM-2 algorithm many apps still use.
FSRS models every card with three numbers:
- Stability: how many days until your chance of recalling it drops below 90%. It grows with every correct answer.
- Difficulty: how "sticky" that clue is for you. A bollard with two unique features is easy; telling Peruvian from Bolivian poles is hard.
- Retrievability: the probability that you remember it today, computed from the two above and the time since the last review.
The target is 90% retention: the app schedules each review for the day retrievability falls to that threshold. Answer correctly and stability grows, pushing the next review further away; fail and the card goes back to the learning queue with short steps.
The ladder above is illustrative but honest: 10 minutes → 1 day → 4 days → 12 days → 1 month → 3 months → 8 months is the real order of magnitude for a card you keep getting right. Seven reviews in total for a clue that no longer slips.
The four answers
After you answer, the app shows the solution and the explanation and asks you to rate how hard it was. That rating is the only information FSRS needs.
| Answer | When to use it | What the scheduler does |
|---|---|---|
| Again | You didn't know it or got it wrong | Back into today's queue with 1 and 10 minute steps; counts as a lapse |
| Hard | Correct, but hesitant or very slow | Short interval, difficulty rises a little |
| Good | Correct with normal effort | The expected interval: stability grows |
| Easy | Instant, no thinking | Long interval, difficulty drops; in typed mode the assist level goes up |
With multiple choice the app already knows whether you were right: it only asks you to tell Hard, Good and Easy apart. On the web you can use keys 1–4 and space to flip.
Answer modes
There are three card types, decided by the nature of each meta:
- Country: "In which country do you see this bollard?". Four choices (the distractors are the countries it is genuinely confused with, not four at random) or a typed answer with a corrector.
- Region: "Brazil: in which states do you see coffee fields?". You answer by tapping the country map; partial answers are accepted. This is the regionguessing mode.
- Identify: "Which camera generation is this?", "Which script is this?". Canonical text, multiple choice or typed.
Every card also carries an assist level that evolves with you: it starts with multiple choice, moves to typed with suggestions once you master it, and ends in free typing. A miss drops it a level. You can pin the mode globally in Settings.
The typed-answer corrector understands accents, articles, abbreviations ("NSW") and names in English, Spanish and the local language, and asks "Did you mean Sulawesi?" if you drop a letter.
Alive, fading and forgotten clues
All of MetaSpotter's progress derives from one honest quantity: the retrievability FSRS computes for each clue. From it come three states, and the vocabulary of the whole app:
| State | Definition | Colour |
|---|---|---|
| Alive | Chance of recalling it ≥ 90% | lime |
| Fading | Between 60% and 90%: due or about to be | amber |
| Forgotten | Below 60%, or recent lapses | coral |
| Unlearned | Never seen | grey |
A country lights up when half of its clues are alive and counts as mastered when 90% are. The home-screen map paints every country with that state, so what you see is literally what you will recognise in tonight's game. Nothing is earned by volume: reviewing 200 cards that already sit at 99% barely moves the map; rescuing 10 that were fading moves it a lot.
Everything is retroactive and deterministic: it is computed from your review history, so if you import your progress on another device the map, rank and achievements appear instantly.
The rescue session
The "fading" numeral on the home screen is a button. It opens a session with only the clues about to be lost, from most forgotten to least, up to 50. You can also rescue a specific country from the map. It's the most profitable session in the app: every correct answer there brings back to lime something that was a day away from coral.
Streak and daily goal
The streak doesn't count days you open the app: it counts days you look after the map. A day counts if nothing is left due when you finish, or if you met the daily goal (20 reviews by default) when more than that was due. Every 7 consecutive days earns a streak shield that covers one blank day; you keep one (three with Pro) and they are never for sale.
Ranks
There is no accumulating XP. Rank is a function of the current state of the map, which is why it can drop. Each one describes something you can do in a game:
| Rank | Condition | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Novice | — | You begin. |
| Explorer | 10 countries lit | You recognise the basics of a good handful of countries. |
| Cartographer | 25 lit, 5 mastered | You get the country in most rounds of Europe or Asia. |
| Tracker | 50 lit, 15 mastered, retention ≥ 85% | You tell bollards, poles and plates apart without thinking. |
| Master | 100 lit, 40 mastered, one continent ≥ 80% | You play on par with people who have years of games. |
| MetaSpotter | 60 mastered, retention ≥ 90%, one region deck mastered | You know the meta before the round finishes loading: country and region. |
Achievements
Twelve achievements in four families. None rewards opening the app or doing N reviews: all of them measure a real skill or real consistency, and some are genuinely hard. Hidden ones are discovered.
First light
Continent lit
Around the world
Bollard eye
Pole reader
Plate spotter
Regionguesser
No longer confused
Nemesis
Steel memory
Map lit 7
Map lit 100Blue ring: easy. Lime: medium. Amber: hard. Violet: legendary. "Steel memory", for instance, demands 92% retention for 30 consecutive days; "Around the world", at least one clue alive on every continent.
FAQ
How much time a day?
Ten minutes are enough to keep the map lit at 20 new cards a day. If you have more time, raise new cards per day in Settings; on a busy day, just do what's due.
What if I stop for a week?
Due reviews pile up and some countries fade. Nothing in the history is lost: when you come back, the rescue session prioritises what is most at risk and the map recovers within days.
Is it the same as using Anki with a meta deck?
The scheduler is the same (FSRS). What MetaSpotter adds is the content, ready and maintained (14,516 metas with image, explanation and real distractors), the interactive map for regionguessing, the typed-answer corrector and the whole per-country progress system.
Where do the metas come from?
From the open-source project Learnable Meta (AGPL licence), which in turn cites the Plonk It guides. Every card keeps its source. Images are Google Street View captures and carry their credit.